A TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILWAY NĘCESSARY 205 MR. DAVIS. Then, Mr. President, the Senator [Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts] attributes to me a bias on account of my residence. I believe no man loves the section in which he lives better than I do. Every fiber of my heart would respond to the rights and interests of that section, whenever they are involved. But I feel, Sir, that a public officer has a higher duty than that which his sentiments and his feelings prompt, and think I can show to the Senator that he is entirely mistaken in the conclusion at which he has arrived. As he does not question my motives, so I shall not impugn his; but from the record will conclusively prove to him, or to any other man who may be prejudiced like himself, that if there be a difference at all, it is upon the other side. I am not conscious of ever having favored one line or the other; but if the record leads to such conclusion, it must convict me of having favored the extreme northern line; so it stands. My position is, that the completion of this great work is necessary to the due execution of the functions of the General Government, that it will not be achieved by private capital alone, therefore that we should strike off every shackle which impedes its execution; should abandon the right to collect duty on the iron employed; give the whole limit of the United States from which to select a route; extend every aid we can constitutionally afford, to insure the construction of the road somewhere, be it where it may, so that it is on the soil of the United States. If by haggling over petty sectional controversies, if by sticking in the bark and destroying the vital energy of the Constitution, politicians shall defeat the efforts which have been made from session to session, shall prostrate the last hope for this road across the continent, and thus unprepared should we become involved in a war with the great maritime Powers of Europe, they may, when it is too late to avert the disasters which have been so often foretold, have cause to pray for the mountains to fall upon and cover them from public indignation; to them may attach the blame, on us all may press the shame and sorrow of having lost to the country a territory worth innumerable treasure, of having forfeited that, the value of which cannot be measured by money the prestige of stability, progress and invincibility, and the right to inscribe on our national shield EQUAL TO THE PROTECTION OF A CONTINENT-WIDE REPUBLIC. FROM SENATOR DAVIS'S FAREWELL SPEECH TO THE SENATE [DELIVERED JANUARY 21, 1861. THE TEXT IS THAT OF It has been a conviction of pressing necessity, it has been a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us, which has brought Mississippi to her present decision. She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races. That Declaration of Independence is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for which it was made. The communities were declaring their independence; the people of those communities were asserting that no man was born to use the language of Mr. Jefferson -booted and spurred, to ride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equalmeaning the men of the political community; that there was no divine right to rule; that no man inherited the right to govern; that there were no classes by which power and place descended to families; but that all stations were equally within the grasp of each member of the body politic. These were the great principles they announced; these were the purposes for which they made their declaration; these were the ends to which their enunciation was directed. They have no reference to the slave; else, how happened it that among the items of arraignment against George III. was that he endeavored to do just what the North has been endeavoring of late to do-to stir up insurrection among our slaves? Had the Declaration announced that the negroes were free and 1 The speech may also be found in "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government." FAREWELL SPEECH TO THE SENATE 207 equal, how was the Prince to be arraigned for raising up insurrection among them? And how was this to be enumerated among the high crimes which caused the colonies to sever their connection with the mother country? When our Constitution was formed, the same idea was rendered more palpable; for there we find provision made for that very class of persons as property; they were not put upon the footing of equality with white men even upon that of paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation was concerned, were discriminated against as a lower caste, only to be represented in the numerical proportion of three fifths. not Then, Senators, we recur to the compact which binds us together; we recur to the principles upon which our Government was founded; and when you deny them, and when you deny to us the right to withdraw from a Government which, thus perverted, threatens to be destructive of our rights, we but tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim our independence and take the hazard. This is done, not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit; but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our sacred duty to transmit unshorn to our children. I find in myself, perhaps, a type of the general feeling of my constituents towards yours. I am sure I feel no hostility toward you, Senators from the North. I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of my God, I wish you well; and such, I am sure, is the feeling of the people whom I represent towards those whom you represent. I, therefore, feel that I but express their desire when I say I hope, and they hope, for peaceable relations with you, though we must part. They may be mutually beneficial to us in the future, as they have been in the past, if you so will it. The reverse may bring disaster on every portion of the country; and, if you will have it thus, we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may. In the course of my service here, associated at different times with a great variety of Senators, I see now around me some with whom I have served long; there have been points of collision; but, whatever of offence there has been to me, I leave here. I carry with me no hostile remembrance. Whatever offence I have given which has not been redressed, or for which satisfaction has not been demanded, I have, Senators, in this hour of our parting, to offer you my apology for any pain which, in heat of discussion, I have inflicted. I go hence unencumbered of the remembrance of any injury received, and having discharged the duty of making the only reparation in my power for any injury offered. Mr. President and Senators, having made the announcement which the occasion seemed to me to require, it only remains for me to bid you a final adieu. EDGAR ALLAN POE [EDGAR ALLAN POE was born in Boston, January 19, 1809, and died in Baltimore, October 7, 1849. He was the son of David Poe, who came of good Maryland stock, and Elizabeth Arnold, an English actress whose first husband was named Hopkins. The pair played in various cities and led a precarious existence. Before Edgar was three years old his father and mother had died, and he himself, with an elder brother and a younger sister, had been thrown upon the world in Richmond, Virginia. He found a second mother in Mrs. John Allan, wife of a well-to-do tobacco merchant. He was brought up in comfort, if not comparative luxury, and at the age of six was taken to England and put to school at Stoke-Newington. In 1820 the Allans returned to America, and Edgar was sent to school once more in Richmond. He distinguished himself as a swimmer, declaimer, student, and general leader of his school fellows, but also displayed a certain aloofness and perhaps gave signs of possessing a romantic and morbid temperament. In February, 1826, he entered Jefferson's newly opened University of Virginia. He showed proficiency in the languages, and escaped all official censure of his conduct, but associated with wild students and lost heavy sums of money. Mr. Allan refused to pay these "debts of honor," and placed the insulted Poe at a counting-room desk. The affair is rather obscure, but it is plain that Poe could not stand the punishment imposed on him. In some way he reached Boston, and in the late spring of 1827 enlisted in the army as Edgar A. Perry. In the summer he published his tiny and now very rare EDGAR ALLAN POE 209 volume entitled "Tamerlane and Other Poems," and in the autumn he was transferred to Fort Moultrie, near Charleston, the scene of his famous story, "The Gold-Bug." Toward the end of 1828 he was transferred to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, where on the first of the new year he was promoted for merit to be sergeant-major. Communications were now opened with the Allans, and Poe was given leave of absence that he might bid farewell to Mrs. Allan, who was on her death-bed. The furlough came too late, but it was arranged with Mr. Allan that a substitute should be provided for Poe, and that he should try to enter West Point. While waiting for this scheme to be carried into effect, Poe resided in Baltimore, where late in 1829 he published his second volume, “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems." On July 1, 1830, he entered West Point. He did well in some classes, but spent much of his time in dissipation, partly because his hopes of a share in Mr. Allan's fortune were rendered vain by the latter's second marriage. In January, 1831, he took a decisive step by neglecting all duties for two weeks, the result of which was a court-martial and dismissal. He went to New York, and there, relying on the subscriptions of his fellow-cadets, he issued a volume entitled "Poems," which contained "Israfel" and the stanzas "To Helen." Scarcely anything is known of his life for the next two years. He tried in various ways to make a living in Baltimore, wrote his earliest stories, continued his bad habits, apparently, and broke finally with the Allans. Yet he was not friendless. These dark years in Baltimore made him an inmate of the house of widowed Mrs. Clemm, his father's sister, in whom he found a true guardian angel. And in her fragile young daughter Virginia he found another spiritual comforter of a less protective but not less influential kind a shadowy embodiment of his ideals of beauty and pathos. In October, 1833, his fortunes seemed to brighten, for he not only won a prize of one hundred dollars by his story " Ms. Found in a Bottle," but secured the friendly help of the romancer, John P. Kennedy (q.v.). Through the latter he obtained employment (1835) on the newly established Southern Literary Messenger, and, removing to Richmond, he married his child-cousin, Virginia. For a time he thought himself a made man, and his remarkable tales and the severe criticism he bestowed on some popular but undeserving books made him famous throughout the country. His habits soon put an end to his prospects, however, and in January, 1837, he removed to New York, where he failed to secure permanent literary work, his single long story, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" (1838), not proving a success. In the summer of 1838 a new start was made in Philadelphia. That city was then the centre for magazines, and Poe was fully beset with the idea of establishing an independent organ of his own. Pending this consummation he contributed to the journals of others some of the highly imaginative stories that have made him famous. In about a year he secured on The Gentleman's Magazine a position, which he lost by the summer of 1840. He had meanwhile gathered his fiction in two volumes, "Tales of the Grotesque and |